Analysis of Ray Bradbury´s Farenheit 451

In this passage, Montag is just arriving home after meeting a girl named Clarisse on his way home. As he is walking into the room his smile was fading away “like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now full out. Darkness” (Bradbury 9).

Montag is someone who is shy and keeps his thoughts to himself, but thinks many things. He shows that he is distracted instead of being happy throughout the book. At the time, he was walking home from work and was looking at Clarisse. Clarisse is a girl who would roam the streets and was also Montag's neighbor. She walks over to Guy and they start to have a conversation while walking to their houses. They discussing if talking about to see if Montag is really happy or if he was lying. She keeps questioning him. Bradbury explains “He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as true state affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run across the lawn with the mask and the way

He first meets Clarisse walking home one night from work. She is unlike the people Montag is used to talking to. She opens his eyes to something other than the life he lives. “He wore his happiness like a mask,” and he only realized this, after reflecting from his conversation with Clarisse. (9) Realizing this, his happiness was gone, and he began questioning other things he thought he believed in.

Fahrenheit 451 Essay “My theory on life is that life is beautiful. Life doesn't change. We people change.

Montag begins to think about what Clarisse said to him “Are you happy?” (pg 10). When he returns home, he realizes that he is not happy with his

Bradbury uses Clarisse’s character to foil Montag and reveal his disconnect from reality and nature. Clarisse is a peculiar girl who is different than the average person in this society. Clarisse introduces Montag to the world’s potential for beauty and meaning with her gentle

Montag’s first reaction is to laugh off Clarisse’s questions; he seems uneasy with the thought of reading. His emotions and laughing reaction reveal his nervousness around a young girl, who can so easily challenge the values that he has followed all his life. Clarisse is also important because she awakens Montag to the natural world. She asks him if he knew there was a man on the moon, or if he knew what it means when a dandelion rubs off on a chin. Clarisse is the one who introduces Bradbury’s theme that “[n]ature is good and technology is bad” (Huntington 113). Clarisse lets Montag experience freedom from his society because “[t]he novel expresses this vision of freedom with images of sentimentalized nature” (Huntington 112). She leaves him feeling that something in Montag’s world has changed, that “[h]e was not happy…[h]e wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask” (Bradbury 12). Montag can no longer accept the world the way it is, and thus, either he, or it, must change. He then comes home to his wife, Mildred, to find her near death from a suicide attempt. Montag watches as two employees use a sinister machine to purge his wife of the poison. Montag sees the machine as “black cobra”, and he wonders if “it suck[s] out all the poisons accumulated with the years” (Bradbury 14).

In this novel there is a character named Clarisse and she is a vouge character. Her role in this novel is a very important part because she is the reason Montag begins to think the way he began to think. Clarisse was an ‘unusual’ character because in this society she wasn’t the type of ‘normal’ she was supposed to be. The society they lived in, people like her needed mental help or were known as crazy when really the whole society was messed up. Those like Clarisse were the normal ones, the ones who knew for felt as if they knew the

Clarisse is known as an outcast and “guilty”. She lived on the edge and she was happy instead of the people following the rules to “achieve” happiness.

Before this understanding, Montag is ‘happy’ and feels that nothing is wrong with his life. He loves his job. He is just like everyone else. Blank and empty inside, Montag wears a mask of happiness on the outside. In the very beginning, he loves to burn books. Afterall, he is a fireman, whose job is to burn the horrible books. For him “it was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things blackened and changed” (1). Montag was just another person brainwashed by television and the lies of government. Montag would have never suspected that Clarisse is the person who takes off his blindfold. After she asks Montag if he is happy, he starts to notice the world. At first, he assures himself that he is happy. When he’s home, he realizes “he was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask…” (9). The mask of happiness that the leaders and government force the people to wear has been torn from Montag’s face and he is shocked as he sees the truth for the first time. Clarisse has started the first step in a transformation that will lead Montag on a path towards true

As the conversation carries on between Clarisse and Montag, she begins to notice that Montag is different. She claims “You 're not like the others. I 've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time anymore for anyone else. You 're one of the few who put up with me...He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other” (Bradbury 11). Clarisse points out the unique qualities to Montag because whenever they talk, Montag reacts by looking at her or objects that she is talking about. She reveals that the average people cannot comprehend the concept of socializing or reflect on thoughts thus they relapse to a state of violence as a resort to stop thinking. Clarisse doesn’t persuade Montag to think like her, but influence Montag to think outside the box and increase his curiosity. Clarisse’s character going against the common social conformity activates a rare phenomenon inside Montag’s mind. Montag was given two paths, hence the cold and hot or soft and hard. One Path guides Montag down the path of individuality and the other path leads him to the normal society life. Clarisse was an individual who opens the doors to Montag to let him

Clarisse, Montag’s neighbor, is a person that introduces him to a world without technology. She is the catalyst that turns Montag from a mindless drone into a free-thinking and questioning intellectual. She does this when they first meet at the beginning of the novel and they have a conversation. "’I rarely watch the 'parlor walls' [...] So I've lots of time for crazy thoughts [...] Have you seen the -two-hundred-foot-long billboards in the country beyond town? [...]’” [(7). When Montag realizes that he has not been paying attention to these little things in life, he starts to become more interested in talking to Clarisse because she shows him another perspective on life other than a world filled with technology. She shows

Over the next several weeks, Clarisse and Montag develop a friendly relationship. They talk about ideas and thoughts in a way that no one in this society seems to do anymore. Because of Clarisse's influence, Montag grows more concerned about his own life. Then one day, Clarisse disappears and Montag is troubled. Work troubles him even more, for he must participate in burning an old woman's home. Refusing to leave her books and her belongings, she lights her own fire and stays inside, dying a martyr. Montag is moved by the woman's bravery and sees it as a symbol of what is wrong with society. Almost in protest, he steals a book from the woman's house.

Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 published in 1953, introduces a world in which censorship, conformity and ignorance induced by technology have created no application of one’s life. It is a world full of superficiality with wall-sized televisions broadcasting vapid entertainment, and people plug small radios into their ears to escape the dreariness of everyday reality. (any of this seem familiar?) (Cliffsnotes, 2016)

In the beginning of the book Montag is just like any other member of his society until he meets his first influence,Clariesse McClellans his seventeen year old neighbor. She’s described as crazy by her uncle and an outsider by her peers. Montag and Clariesse meet when Montag is walking home from work. They get to talking and the first very impactful thing she says to Montag is on page seven at the end of their conversation she asks, “Are you happy?”. Just that alone sent Montag into a spiral of questions and that made him start to question everything because when she asked that